Trust No Bitch: Part 2

Clara Wright: Wednesday, 18th November, 2015

There weren't many things worse than a 9AM criminology lecture and having to wait outside the lecture hall with a tired, crotchety Gemma, an Alice who wouldn't stop hissing about getting hold of the Little Chef security footage later that day, and a whey-faced, despondent Lilly, still inconsolable about missing her dad's wedding due to the Supplier, wasn't doing anything to assuage Clara's irritation at having to be there. She'd spent a wonderful, alcohol filled evening with Holly Khan the night before, sharing cigarettes and watching old movies, only to wake up that morning to texts from her boyfriend Joe asking why he hadn't heard from her in such a long time, a bitch of a hangover and even worse, a comminatory text from the Supplier.

Are you getting tired yet?

The police are, Clara.

They're looking for you.

The least you can do is help them out.

Or I will.

It had said, Clara refraining from telling the others about it as they waited outside the lecture hall. It didn't help that Vicky Prescott had just wheeled past with a cold smile at Alice either, provoking her to once again launch into their plans for later that evening.

"So, we know what's happening, yes? I've got rowing practice after this, three hours, then I'll go home, change and then I'm picking Gemma up from work and we're going to Little Chef. Lilly and Clara, you're meeting us there at 2 and Gemma, remember, you need to get changed into something smart because if someone finds us we're telling them we're there for an interview and-" She talked so fast as if scared once she closed her mouth she'd never be abled to open it again.

"Alice! Calm the fuck down. We know all this. And you're stressing me out." Gemma interjected peevishly. She frowned, craning her neck to look past the group of students that had formed outside the lecture hall, waiting for the professor to arrive and unlock the door. "Where are they? It's gone 10 past already. This is 10 minutes I could've spent in bed, for Christ's sake." She grumbled, marching over to the door and pulling down on the handle. "Has anybody even tried the-", but before she could finish her sentence the door swung open and she threw her hands up in disgruntlement. "Ah. Of course." She said, the heads of the group turning, one by one, towards her, all of them swarming upon the door like a flock of pigeons who'd spotted a lone chip on a grotty street floor. "Bunch of wankers." Gemma muttered after them as they all disappeared into the hall. Along with Alice's friend, Sasha, they were forced to the back of the line whilst everyone else made their way in, Sasha smirking over her shoulder in Clara's general direction as the doorway cleared. Her complacent, pug-like face wound Clara's entrails into knots.

"I hate that girl." She muttered to Lilly, staring down at her boots, the four of them absent-mindedly following the crowd that was flooding into the hall. "You know how there are some people who make you want to claw their eyes out just by looking at you? Sasha Evans is one of them." She was so immersed in her own vitriol that she barely felt Lilly tugging on her cardigan sleeve, first noticing the eerie chimes of a tune she didn't recognise blasting from the speakers, then that the only person that had uttered a word in the last few seconds was herself. As her eyes moved from her feet to the room in front of her, she became aware of the forest of legs. Nobody had begun to ascend the stairs and take a seat, they had instead all entered the room and stopped dead in their tracks like they'd hit some kind of invisible barricade. Only once Clara's eyes settled at the same angle as everybody else's did Lilly's tugs and everyone's stillness make sense. The walls were plastered with photos of two women, sat upon the floor in a dimly lit, otherwise stark corridor. The woman's hair crimson, to her shoulders, its loose curls, were familiar to Clara, and so were the tiny, chalky hands nestling into the long raven hair of the other woman, their 2 mouths becoming one, faces, bodies agglutinating. It was her own hair, her own hands.